


but i'm alone with you

by starlight_sugar



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 11:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7683445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hero, John, and the end of the world: a quiet moment, in the midst of the wreckage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but i'm alone with you

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for non-graphic discussion of violence and death. It's a zombie apocalypse, after all.

They stop in a convenience store for the night, next to an old petrol station. It’s picked clean of proper food, like most everything is, with shelves and all sorts of garbage strewn across the floor. There are bloodstains on everything, some fresher than others, some redder than others. Hero barely notices them, just gravitates towards the back, to a camping tent set up in the back of the store. Where there’s a tent, there could be supplies.

“Careful,” John calls, lingering round the front of the store.

“Always,” she answers, and hefts her shovel a little higher. It’s unwieldy, as far as weapons go, but it does the job. It’s gotten her this far.

There are no noises in the store, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. It smells awful, but that could be the corpses near the door - three of them, looking more human than zombie, neat bullet holes through their heads. Everything smells awful, these days. She supposes it’s one of the perks of the zombie apocalypse.

Carefully, she pushes the tent open with the flat of the shovel. Empty, except for a few cans.

“There’s canned fruit in here!” Hero exclaims, pulling the opening back and dropping to her knees for a closer look. Four cans, three of pineapple and one of pears. She picks one can up and flips it over - the expiration date isn’t for another year, if she’s counting the days right. “We can have dessert!”

“Fruit doesn’t count as dessert,” John scoffs from behind her. She turns around and grins at him, holding up the can of pineapple, and his face softens. “But it’s as good as we’ve got now, isn’t it?”

“It’s the best food we’ve seen in weeks,” she says cheerfully, as though she isn’t sick of the taste of MREs. They’re lucky to have that much, lucky that they ran into someone who traded them for food they’d stolen from army surplus. They don’t have guns anymore, but they can still fight just fine, and besides, it’s easier to fight when you have the physical strength to hold your weapon. She’d rather have food than guns any day.

“Are we camping out here, then?” he asks, and sits down next to her, cross-legged. He sets his baseball bat next to him. “Set up in someone else’s tent?”

“I don’t think they’re using it,” Hero points out. “Do you want to eat now?”

“How many cans are there?”

“Four, but they’re heavier than the rations.”

John pulls his backpack off and sets it in front of him. “We can eat a can tonight.”

Hero beams at him. She doesn’t like pineapple terribly much, but she knows John does. Not to mention, what with the apocalypse, she’ll take any fruit she can get. There’s not much Vitamin C to be found these days. Nothing sweet. This is the best treat they’ve had in weeks.

“Do we need a can opener?” John wonders.

“Does can opener mean a knife?”

“Can opener means something that opens a can.”

“Either way, there’s a pull tab on it, see?” Hero reaches for the tab and pulls it off. “We don’t exactly have forks.”

“My hands are clean if yours are,” John says, rather dryly, as if they haven’t shared all the germs left in the human world by now. “Let’s eat.”

  


It’s hard, is the thing. It’s hard to live like this.

It’s a transition, and it’s a struggle. She was lucky enough Before that she never had to worry about where her next meal was coming from, or if she was safe when she slept. She never had to be afraid of other people. She never had to worry about things that weren’t quite people anymore. She was safe, almost always.

Hero doesn’t think about Before very often, makes it something of a point not to. There’s nothing but confusion and hurt there. She remembers uni, dating John, being eighteen and happy and so sure that the world would never change.

They’re in the After now, and the world always changes, it just takes some time. The early reports were a flu epidemic, and then the first reports came in. Flu madness.

(“Flu _madness,_ ” Bea repeated incredulously. “Oh, sorry, just got a case of flu madness, it’s like spring fever, just with a bit more murder _,_ nothing to be bothered about.” And Hero laughed, because it was a rather silly name, especially considering that people were being killed. She decided later that maybe she’d rather have an outbreak of flu madness than a zombie virus.)

The reports had been almost fanciful, and then disturbing. A disease that turns you into a killer? It was only a strange phenomenon until the first reports came that flu victims weren’t dying. They died, transmitted the flu, stayed alive - or at least, didn’t die. The world hadn’t transitioned into a zombie state all at once, but Hero remembers the first day of reports of zombies in New Zealand. That was when Before ended, a stark contrast to now, all of the colors and joy fading into something much bleaker. That was the turning point.

The first days of the After were a blur. It was sheer luck that everyone had been in Auckland together, but it hadn’t gone well for them. Groups don’t do so well, she’s learned, not big ones. They’d been nearly a dozen strong, but then Leo had gotten bit, then Meg, then Peter was shot by another group, then Bea burning up in that building-

John’s here, though. John’s been here this whole time. Holding her hand when someone suggested that they get weapons, teaching her to swing a shovel hard enough to dent a skull, never once leaving her side after Bea died, after they were the only ones left.

She still knows their anniversary is in two months. It’s been tricky, counting the days. The collapse of human society had led to some pollution, and it’s hard to see the sun shine through sometimes. But in two months, she and John have their second anniversary. They’ll have to do something nice, she thinks. Maybe they’ll save a can of pineapple for it.

It’s hard, of course it is, the end of the world could never be soft or gentle or easy. But John makes it bearable, and all she needs is to be able to bear it.

  


They end up staying in the tent for the night, even though it’s really more of a one-person tent than meant for the two of them. John brings his baseball bat in the tent but Hero leaves her shovel outside, and they’re curled up together, a can of pineapple between them.

“Open your mouth,” John says. Hero does, and he drops a chunk of pineapple between her lips. She beams at him as she eats it, and he smiles slowly back at her. For all that they’re alone, they don’t have time to themselves nearly as often as she wishes they did. Every minute is spent searching for something, painfully aware, painfully afraid. Even now she’s still waiting for something to go wrong, for someone or something to swoop in and try to kill them or steal their pineapple.

Hero doesn’t care particularly much about anyone else in the world anymore. It’s awful, she knows, but the world is what took away her friends and her kindness and her cousin. She supposes the world let her keep John, but she prefers to think of it as her keeping John all by herself.

She swallows her pineapple and looks at her boyfriend. The only person she has left. The only person she needs, anymore. “John?”

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

John shifts, moves in, brushes his lips against Hero’s. It’s not a kiss, barely a movement, but it makes her smile anyways. “I love you too,” he murmurs.

“To the end of the world?”

John snorts, rather humorlessly, but he smiles at her. “Through the end of the world,” he says, and Hero’s heart clenches.

There’s no through, yet. There’s been Before and After, but there’s nothing after the After. That’ll be the Through, she supposes. And John will be there for it.

“Through it all,” she says softly, and picks up a piece of pineapple. John opens his mouth, and Hero obliges, lets him eat it. She waits for him to swallow before she kisses him, and he tastes like pineapple - or maybe she does, but the lines between them are blurrier than they’ve ever been. The world is him and her and survival and not much more.

There’s more today. Today, there’s a tent and temporary shelter. Today, there’s time to kiss her boyfriend as though the world isn’t ending around them. Today, there’s pineapple.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as one of two commissions for the amazing [Shawna](http://theperksofbeingabooknerd.tumblr.com) \- you should definitely check out [her show](https://twitter.com/booknerdpro) starting soon! The title comes from [No Sound but the Wind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xVl5a8YpI0) by The Editors. As always you can see what I'm up to on [Tumblr](http://pervincetosscobble.tumblr.com) and [Twitter.](http://twitter.com/ezrabridgers)


End file.
